Writing passionately, editing meticulously, living joyfully

Stop it

I was just captivated, in the middle of the night, by BBC’s stunning new multimedia investigation, America’s Child Death Shame. According to their statistics, an American child dies from abuse or neglect every five hours.

Every five hours. That puts us as the nation with the worst child abuse record in the entire industrialized world.

After taking statistics in high school, I learned how easy it is for researchers to err in data collection or morph stats to appear in their favor. I can only say that I desperately hope those child abuse statistics are wrong.

I really hope that stories like that of Emma, an adorable four-year-old redhead who was raped and beaten by her mother’s new live-in boyfriend, are exceedingly rare. I really hope that caseworkers are not, in fact, overloaded to more than double a suggested caseload due to short staffing and underfunding. I really hope that people don’t actually beat and torture their children in the ways depicted.

But reality is, this story is real, and really horrifying.

How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? -Psalm 82:2